A Mooost Unfortunate Discovery!

So, Zomtober has come and gone, and what a thoroughly enjoyable experience it has been! There is something immensely satisfying about digging out long neglected miniatures and bringing them, ever so slightly, back to life.  It has also proved rather rewarding, whether through manipulating plastic sprues to create undead French artillerymen, researching revolting revolutionaries or rediscovering forgotten painting techniques in the form of Army Painter Quickshade.

Whilst once again rummaging through the 'Trays of Trepidation', that peculiar purgatory where prepared miniatures await their turn upon the painting table, I came across another long forgotten collection. These, however, were rather different from the usual assortment of unfortunate soldiery; a small selection of farmyard animals that had fallen 'fowl' of some particularly unpleasant plague, now apparently wandering the countryside with their innards hanging out!

The miniatures had already been primed and based; closer inspection revealing two cows, a pig and a sheep, but for the life of me I couldn't remember where I had acquired them.  Employing a little judicious Google-fu, I discovered an almost exact match on the 'Bad Squiddo Games' website, where they were listed as 'Zombie Livestock'. There were, however, two rather curious discrepancies. Firstly, the Bad Squiddo examples were resin, whereas mine were distinctly white metal. Secondly, their collection comprised three animals, whilst I had four!  Further investigation revealed that the miniatures had been sculpted by Phil Hynes and were originally available from Bear's Head Miniatures, before being acquired by Bad Squiddo in 2022. Slowly, the mists of time began to lift. I must have purchased my little menagerie directly from Bear's Head Miniatures, presumably when the figures were still being cast in metal, but what of the mysterious fourth animal?

Try as I might, I could find no reference to another sculpt. Had I somehow acquired a particularly rare bovine specimen? Was there an elusive fourth member of the herd that had escaped the attentions of the internet?  Rather than allow the mystery to consume any more precious painting time, I decided to leave the investigation there and reach for the brushes.  For inspiration, I relied heavily upon Andrew Taylor's wonderfully gruesome painted examples on the Bad Squiddo website. The sculpts themselves are gloriously macabre, with great rents in their hides, exposed ribs and a frankly alarming quantity of internal organs making an appearance where they really ought not.

Once the basic painting was complete and everything suitably varnished, it was time to deploy the secret gore recipe!  This is essentially Tamiya Clear Red mixed with a little black wash, producing a wonderfully unpleasant substance that retains a slight sheen when dry. It is particularly effective for suggesting fresh, glistening wounds, although it can also be thinned and built up in layers to create more subtle bloodstaining upon skin or fabric.  Not that subtlety was particularly high on the agenda with this little lot!

There is something wonderfully macabre about these grotesque creatures. The cows are perhaps a little on the large side, but given that they appear to be continuing their rumination despite having misplaced substantial portions of their anatomy, I hardly think their dimensions are the most pressing concern.  Just before sitting down to write this very post, I happened to glance through the drafts section of this most humble of weblogs and was astonished to discover that there were more than fifty unfinished posts lurking within!  Some were little more than titles, others contained a few hastily scribbled thoughts, whilst several included work in progress photographs of projects now labelled, ‘a good idea at the time’.  There, nestled amongst the forgotten offerings from 2018, was a post simply entitled 'Zombie Cows'.

Opening it revealed a solitary photograph.  “Good grief!” exclaimed I, as staring back at me from the distant past was the answer to the mystery. The photograph showed a conversion that I had clearly undertaken using one of the original zombie cow miniatures. Presumably dissatisfied with having two identical head of cattle, I had set about one of them with a razor saw and liberal quantities of Green Stuff.  The head had been removed and repositioned at a different angle, one of the forelegs straightened and a new tail added. Most extravagantly, I had extended the unfortunate creature's exposed intestines so that they now trailed all the way to the ground.  In short, the elusive fourth sculpt had never existed; it was simply the product of my own forgotten handiwork, a little piece of beef butchery undertaken some eight years earlier and subsequently consigned to the ‘Trays of Trepidation’.

I must confess to being rather pleased with this unexpected discovery, although the Saintly Mrs. Awdry has been considerably less impressed by the whole business.  Apparently, the sight of a cow dragging its intestines across the countryside is not everyone's idea of wholesome entertainment.  Still, another mystery solved, another forgotten project completed and, perhaps most alarmingly, another reminder of my increasingly unreliable memory!  Perhaps it is time to put yours truly out to pasture?